deficiency

/dɪˈfɪʃɪnsi/

/dɪˈfɪʃɪnsi/

Other forms: deficiencies

A deficiency is an insufficient amount of something. If you feel sluggish and tired all day, you might have an iron deficiency, meaning you aren't eating enough iron-rich foods.

You are most likely to hear the word deficiency in regard to health, like a sleep deficiency. But you can use deficiency to describe other kinds of lack — a deficiency of fun that occurred while your friends were out of town. Deficiency also means a failure or shortcoming, like a deficiency in math class, which might result in a notice from school — known as a deficiency — being mailed to your home.

Definitions of deficiency

1. noun

   lack of an adequate quantity or number
   synonyms: inadequacy, insufficiency

   types:

   exiguity, leanness, meagerness, meagreness, poorness, scantiness, scantness

   the quality of being meager

   deficit, shortage, shortfall

   the property of being an amount by which something is less than expected or required

   scarceness, scarcity

   a small and inadequate amount

   slenderness

   the quality of being slight or inadequate

   wateriness

   meagerness or poorness connoted by a superfluity of water (in a literary style as well as in a food)

   abstemiousness

   restricted to bare necessities

   oxygen deficit

   temporary oxygen shortage in cells resulting from strenuous exercise

   spareness, sparseness, sparsity, thinness

   the property of being scanty or scattered; lacking denseness

   dearth, paucity

   an insufficient quantity or number

   infrequency, rareness, rarity

   noteworthy scarcity

   type of:

   amount

   the relative magnitude of something with reference to a criterion
2. noun

   the state of needing something that is absent or unavailable
   “water is the critical deficiency in desert regions”

   synonyms: lack, want

   types:

   absence

   the state of being absent

   dearth, famine, shortage

   an acute insufficiency

   deficit

   a deficiency or failure in neurological or mental functioning

   mineral deficiency

   lack of a mineral micronutrient that is essential for normal nutrition or metabolism

   shortness

   the condition of being short of something

   stringency, tightness

   a state occasioned by scarcity of money and a shortage of credit

   nonoccurrence

   absence by virtue of not occurring

   awayness

   the state of being elsewhere than in particular place

   sideropenia

   a deficiency of iron; results from inadequate iron in the diet or from hemorrhage

   type of:

   demand, need

   a condition requiring relief